


Loss

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscarriage, Post Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 06:36:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3239936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t a picture per se. It was a printout. A fuzzy black and white printout that didn’t resemble much of anything unless you knew what you were looking for, and Jensen had long ago memorized the tiny shape amid all the black and white static of the image so that his thumb caressed it without hesitation or thought now. </p>
<p>His daughter.</p>
<p>Or what he liked to believe would have been his daughter, had he and Jared been allowed to keep her.</p>
<p>
  <em>Jensen reminisces one evening while looking at an old sonogram printout of the daughter he and Jared never got a chance to know.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss

Jensen pushed aside the day’s work that included three new scripts to review and notes from Lindsey on a couple of the shows she deemed might need his personal attention soon; but it could all wait until tomorrow. It was pushing nine o’clock and Jared would be down from tucking Garret in bed soon, and then it would be ‘their’ time. Jensen divided his time and made sacrifices and cuts in a lot of places in his life, but never when it came to Jared and Garret. Never when it came to his family. They were the most important thing in his life…all of them.

Jensen glanced at the door of this office, still pulled mostly shut—he never closed it all the way, he didn’t want that kind of wall between him and his son or his husband—and strained an ear to hear Jared’s voice still reading Garret his bedtime story. He pushed away from his desk and leaned to pull his wallet from his back pocket. He kept a picture of Jared in it, and one of Garret that had gotten traded out every three months at first and now every six to coincide with his school picture schedule. Tucked back behind those, though, was one more picture.

It wasn’t a picture per se. It was a printout. A fuzzy black and white printout that didn’t resemble much of anything unless you knew what you were looking for, and Jensen had long ago memorized the tiny shape amid all the black and white static of the image so that his thumb caressed it without hesitation or thought now. 

His daughter.

Or what he liked to believe would have been his daughter, had he and Jared been allowed to keep her.

Eight years ago, Jared had called Jensen from the set of a made-for-TV film he was shooting during their own show’s season hiatus and blurted that he was pregnant and he was sorry and he knew they hadn’t really planned on kids this early but he was happy and he really, really hoped Jensen was happy, too. Jensen had sat on the other end of the phone, speechless, listening so hard to the silence following Jared’s little outburst that he thought he could hear the younger man’s heart beating like a trapped bird’s across the miles; and of course Jensen was happy. How could he be anything but thrilled? No, they hadn’t really planned on kids until a little later, and it might make the next season of the show a bit tricky working around a pregnant Jared, but they’d deal. Of course, they’d deal.

They had, and everything had gone as text book perfect as could be. Jared and the baby were strong and healthy all the way through, and even Jared’s labor went like clockwork starting at seven on a Tuesday morning, increasing steadily and strongly throughout the day while he dilated like a dream, and ending with the birth of their nine pound six ounce baby boy at eight thirty-seven that evening. It was perfect. Garret was perfect.

A year ago today, Jared had sat across from Jensen at lunch on a Sunday and said, 

“You know how we were kind of toying with the idea of an addition?”

Jensen cocked an eyebrow and watched Jared pointedly look over at Garret who was absorbed in his peanut butter and jelly but whose ears still worked perfectly for a seven-year-old. He frowned in thought for a second and then stared at his husband across the table, goggle eyed. “You mean…?”

“Yes.”

Jared’s face had said it all. He was grinning and blushing and giddy. They had given some serious thought over the years to a second child, but they kept hanging back, teetering on the edge in wondering if it would take away from Garret in some way to have another child with whom he had to share all the things he had so far taken for granted as belonging only to him in his short life. They hadn’t really decided for sure when Jared gave him the news over that Sunday lunch, but it was no less welcome a surprise. 

Two weeks later, though, it was all over. 

Jared had started spotting earlier in the week. Just a little. Little enough that he had convinced himself it was just one of those slightly less common things he hadn’t experienced the first time around, especially since he was pushing the bottom side of thirty-five now. A couple of days later, though, and there was too much blood to ignore. He took another pregnancy test and then another just to try and calm his jittering nerves, and the results were barely conclusive. Jensen had tried to reassure him, had even called and made the appointment with Jared’s doctor himself to let them do a test, and then gone with him Wednesday afternoon. 

Jared had lain silent and shivering on the table while Dr. Miranda Blake gently prodded the slight swell of his lower abdomen asking if Jared felt any pain or discomfort. He shook his head and a tear leaked from the corner of his eye and Jensen caught it on his thumb and brushed it away and then took his husband’s hand and held it tight. 

Miranda excused herself to go check the test results, and Jensen stood by the exam bed, still holding Jared’s hand between his own, and watched while his husband tucked his bottom lip up between his teeth, worried it, and then let it go and breathed long and deep in an effort to let go of the fear wracking his bones.

The door opened and Jensen felt Jared’s pulse leap in time with his own as both their heads turned in unison to Miranda’s face. 

Her eyes said it all.

She verbalized it anyway because that’s what she had to do, how the HCG levels and other indicators were all too low, but that another test in a couple of days with which to compare would be more conclusive, and Jensen and Jared heard none of it. 

Jensen watched while Jared crumbled in slow motion beneath his stoic exterior until the tears were flowing freely and even Miranda had to press at the corners of her eyes to keep from crying. 

“I shouldn’t be crying,” Jared had whispered brokenly. “It’s not like I even had a chance to be attached or anything.”

Jensen said nothing, just squeezed his husband’s hand tighter.

They didn’t need to go back for the second test. 

At five-thirty Thursday morning Jared woke with a gasp. His lower back felt like it was in a vice and while he shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position, he felt a tightening in his belly. He stilled. Waited. A few minutes later it happened again, and then again. 

“Jay?” Jensen rolled sleepily to the middle of the bed when his alarm went off at six, and he felt his husband lying stiff and still beside him.

“It’s started,” Jared breathed.

Jensen said nothing. There was nothing he could say. He just opened his arms and let Jared curl up against him and sob.

“This kind of _shit_ isn’t supposed to _fucking_ happen to me!” Jared had raged between wracking sobs. It was all he said, and it was the only time he cried. In the dark, in Jensen’s arms. 

A day and a half later after hours of ceaseless tiny contractions and spontaneous slices of pain that felt like his insides were being shredded out of him, and the compounding pressure in his lower back nearly pushing him to the brink of sanity, Jared’s body gave up the fight and expelled the remains of their second child. He hadn’t cried like Jensen thought he might. He’d just come out of the bathroom, face blank and pale, eyes vacant, passed a glance over Jensen and said in a very flat voice,

“It’s done.”

Time had passed. Jared kept going on like nothing had happened, not even taking any real time off from work; he just fit himself back into his usual routine and went forward, taking care of Garret and Jensen and going to work and juggling life like he always had.

The only time they ever talked about it, Jared was sitting in the living room reading, stroking Jensen’s hair after Garett had gone to bed, and he said without preamble,

“I think you should get fixed.”

Jensen scowled a little in confusion. “Fixed?”

“Fixed,” Jared confirmed without so much as a pause in his stroking. “I don’t want that to ever happen again. I won’t go through it. So, you should get fixed. Or I will.”

Jensen didn’t need to ask what _that_ was. He knew. He also knew that somewhere in the six months silence, Jared had been processing his emotions—he hoped—and was dealing with their loss in his own way; even though Jensen wished Jared would share it with him sometimes, because God knew he was broken up inside over it, but since Jared was so determined to move passed it, Jensen was trying like hell to do that, too.

But sometimes he just couldn’t, and those were the times the little printout, edges worn soft with creased fold lines running down the center, would come out of his wallet, and he would stroke the tiny blur of life that had been theirs for such a short time.

“Scarlett…” he whispered, and moved the pad of his thumb over the  shadowed curve that would have become her back bone with just a few more weeks growth. 

“Jensen?”

Jensen started and turned the photo upside down on the desk, flattening his hand over it protectively. “Hmmm?”

“Garret’s in bed,” Jared said, leaning into the room, hands gripping the doorframe. “You going to come upstairs, or are you still working?”

“I’m, uh…no, I’m finished,” Jensen fumbled. “I’ll be up in just a second.”

Jared stayed in the door, waiting, eyes flicking to Jensen’s hand on the desk. He straightened and walked over slowly, rounding the desk and setting a hip on the arm of Jensen’s chair. He leaned in and peeled his husband’s hand away from the picture, picked it up and turned it over, looking at it in the soft desk light.

“She would have been beautiful,” Jared whispered.

“S-she?” Jensen stammered, hand still limp in Jared’s, eyes wide.

Jared twined his fingers with his husband’s, brought their linked hands in to press against his belly where Jensen could feel him take a tightly drawn breath. 

“Yeah….’she’. I always thought…she would have been a girl.”

Jensen was stunned and there was a lump growing in his throat, pushing up and threatening to burst out as a sob; of relief or pent up anguish, he wasn’t sure which, but it was there and he could barely choke his next words past it,

“Me, too.”

Jared squeezed his fingers, almost so hard it hurt where their knuckles ground together. “I’m sorry, Jen. I know…I know you were hurting just as much as I was. I just couldn’t see past my own pain, I guess; and I couldn’t—can’t—bear the thought of it happening again.”

Jensen nodded slowly. “I’ll call tomorrow. I promise.”

Jared laid the picture back on the desk, pushed it a little toward Jensen. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I just can’t.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jensen soothed. “I get it. And I’m sorry I dragged my feet. I thought maybe….”

“I’d change my mind?” Jared’s voice was a little caustic, but Jensen knew it was just bottled pain making him sound like that. This kind of loss wasn’t something you could just sweep under the rug or walk away from, no matter how hard Jared might try. It would be with him, always. 

“No. Not really. I just wanted time for us both to be sure about it, to not regret any decisions we made,” Jensen said quietly.

Jared let out an exasperated breath. “You don’t deserve this, Jen, and all I can do is keep saying I’m sorry for being such an ass. I just—.”

“Jay,” Jensen took hold of Jared’s chin and turned it so he was forced to look Jensen in the eye. “Babe, I love you, and I can’t begin to imagine what that felt like, or how deep that wound goes. I know my heart was in pieces— _is_ in pieces—and there are bits that I’m never going to find again, but it can’t hurt like what you felt. It can’t. I know that. 

“I also know that we have one amazing, healthy, totally spoiled little boy who is plenty for both of us to handle and will only be that much more loved for being an only child.” Jensen tugged lightly on Jared’s chin until he leaned down enough to let Jensen brush their lips together in the softest and lightest of kisses. “It’s enough, Jay, and I am _so_ happy with that.”

Jared nodded a little and then slid off the arm of the chair and into Jensen’s lap, looping his arms around his husband’s neck and burying his face in the soft, warm curve there. He breathed long and deep, and took Jensen’s rich scent inside himself and let it work like a balm against the always aching wound that seeped inside him. It was healing. Slowly. Eventually, Jared would be able to look at it and not want to cringe and run away. Eventually. But not yet.

Jensen held Jared and stroked his back, sifting his fingers up into the hair at the base of his neck and scratching lightly at his scalp. He felt the silent shudders working through Jared’s long, lanky form but knew that he wasn’t crying. He hadn’t cried since that morning in the dark. In a way, though, this was worse. 

Jensen would do what Jared asked. He would close that door to them forever and give Jared one less choice he had to accidentally stumble upon in the future, but he knew at some point the regret would come. There would be a morning that Jared woke up empty and hollow and needing to be filled and there would be nothing either of them could do about it; but those were consequences with which they would have to live.

Jensen reached past Jared and folded over the little picture and slipped it back in his wallet and then set it aside. He patted Jared’s back, nosed into his hair and kissed his temple. “C’mon, let’s go upstairs, huh?”

Jared nodded into Jensen’s neck and then slowly drew away, eyes flicking to the desktop where the picture was no longer laying, and a little sigh of relief escaped him.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> In memory of Scarlett Anij


End file.
